from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) hasn't yielded much, and some of the results are even a bit embarrassing. We don't really know what to look for when we're listening for alien signals. There's growing evidence that planets like ours are not rare in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life is abundant. Given the vast distances to neighboring star systems, we're also not likely to visit them any time soon.

from the he-has-the-GIF dept

We see more than our fair share of bogus DMCA and intellectual property takedowns around these parts. Hell, there are so many that at one point a website was created strictly to keep a running tally of these things, though that site appear to no longer exist. That said, there are bogus takedowns, and then there are bogus takedowns, and this is the story of one example of the latter and the silliness of the take down first and ask questions later attitude sites take these days.

Tumblr is rife with GIFs. We all know this. Tumblr claims that those that have takedowns filed against them will have their material removed first, but will be provided all the relevant information on the takedown so that they can figure out what happened. Tumblr also claims that real-life human beings review each of these requests to ensure they're legitimate. If that's true, then Tumblr needs to explain why a bunch of GIF artists are having their material removed at the behest of the purported true copyright owner, a future-alien being channeled by a present homosapien named Darryl Anka.

Darryl Anka telepathically channels a space alien from the future named Bashar who lives on the planet Essassani; on this basis, he has claimed many copyright infringements in the creations of Tumblr's GIF artists. The "trained members" of Tumblr's Trust and Safety team who "reviewed" these claims decided they were sufficient grounds for action, and promptly removed the offending GIFs, sending emails to the artists who'd posted them explaining what had happened. Each artist received a "strike" against them under Tumblr's three-strikes-and-you're-terminated policy.

Look, I'm the last person who wants to go around offending the sensibilities of the great nation-planet of Essassani. After all, we may need their military assistance to fight against The Reapers years in the future once we've attained intergalactic travel and all that. But still...what the shit? This is almost enough to make me wonder if this whole episode was specifically designed to throw shade on Tumblr and its likely false claims about how and who is reviewing these takedown notices. Some of the GIF artists in question are equally flabbergasted.

The claim is that my work is in fact copyrighted by “Bashar channeled by Darryl Anka” What? I looked it up. Darryl Anka believes that he is channeling information from a space alien from the future named Bashar that lives on a planet called Essassani via telepathy. Cool story bro. What exactly is the legal basis for their claim? Maybe it has something to do with “ ” ? Is that some kind of alien code? Or did Tumblr just auto copy and paste the email they got including stray HTML garbage characters? What is the evidence? “The copyrighted works can be found at www.basharstore.com/.” I clicked that link. There’s no GIFs on it. There’s nothing that resembles anything on my blog. Again, Tumblr’s policy states “Each claim is reviewed by a trained member of our Trust and Safety team.” I find it difficult to impossible to believe that actually happened.

Here’s my conclusion: Tumblr’s DMCA takedown system is fully automated and “trained members” do not in fact review anything. Or, embarrassingly someone did look at all of that “evidence” and decided that aliens from other planets have legal rights on Earth and that even though a copy of the alleged infringing work is not on the site provided, they’ll just take Darryl’s word for it?

Several things went wrong here. First, this is what you get in a "takedown first" scenario: nonsense claims that are given the benefit of the doubt to the detriment of legitimate speech/art/whatever. Add to that the embarrassment of Tumblr's review process claim being completely debunked and you can imagine how pissed off these artists are. And, finally, we have what is either an impressively creative troll or someone with a mind that broke somewhere around the fourth season of The X-Files a decade ago. And, coming full circle, keep in mind that that's the person getting the benefit of the doubt in the DMCA process.

It's time we did this differently, valuing the speech of the many over the restrictions wished for by the few. Even if amongst those few is Bashar, the alien from the future.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The infamous Wow signal that might have been an extraterrestrial message from aliens from 1977... still hasn't been completely explained. There are actually many mysterious and invisible messages flying around everywhere. Some people have tracked down the origins of a few of these signals, and the answers are probably not as exciting or dramatic as some might have hoped for. Maybe we just haven't been listening long enough....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial life hasn't yielded much evidence that there's anyone else out there. We could be looking in the wrong places or not looking with the right instruments to detect faint signals -- or maybe we're actually alone. But as they say with the lottery, you can't win if you don't play, so we won't find any aliens if we don't continue looking. (Assuming that aliens aren't already on their way to come and get us.)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on for ages, but we still haven't found much convincing evidence that life on other objects in space exists. There's at least one bold prediction that we'll find signs of intelligent life in outer space within the next 25 years, but that's not a bet too many scientists would likely make. Here are just a few more links on the search for ET -- for those bored with the lifeforms on this planet.

from the truth-is-out-there dept

Edward Snowden's leaks have offered much in the way of revelation. Each story seems to broaden our understanding of exactly how widespread the government surveillance efforts have gone. They have caused many Americans to rethink their stance on their own government. They've painted several public employees, including those holding the highest offices in the nation, as inhuman power-mongers. And, according to Iran's semi-official FARS news agency, there may be a reason for that.

FARS is reporting that the latest revelation from the Snowden documents is that the American government is actually run by a race of aliens known as "Tall Whites," who have engineered everything in recent history, most notably the rise of Hitler, because all alien intergalactic roads lead back to Hitler.

Pictured: a Tall White

And, no, I'm not making any of this up or exaggerating any of this. That distinction belongs to the website whatdoesthismean.com, best known as being generally insane and specifically crackpot-conspiracy-theory-ish. Prior to FARS deciding that this was, like, totally legit, that website was the only source for this revelation that has FARS stating:

A stunning Federal Security Services (FSB) report on the nearly two million highly classified top-secret documents obtained from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) run National Security Agency-Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) by the American ex-patriot Edward Snowden states that this information is providing “incontrovertible proof” that an “alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda” is driving US domestic and international policy, and has been doing so since at least 1945.

They further state that the only reason you haven't heard of these "Tall Whites" running the American government is because they have instituted a global network designed to shut down any information sources about them. Apparently, the FARS news agency and WhatDoesThisMean are somehow out of the reach of these alien masterminds.

Thanks for the laugh, FARS. In the future, if you could just go ahead and return to falling for "news stories" from The Onion, that'd be great.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we've been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it's probably good that NASA hasn't given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The origins of life are incredibly mysterious. The life that we normally interact with is made up of chiral molecules, and no one actually knows why only certain chiral molecules are involved in our biology. No one knows how life began, or where it began, or when. Lots of basic questions about life have no solid answers. Attempts to duplicate the creation of life have generally only produced inanimate molecules (except for synthetic life based on existing lifeforms). Here are just a few fascinating links on the topic of life.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The origin of life is a pretty enormous mystery. There are several theories for how life might have come about, but it's difficult to design experiments to narrow down these options. In the meantime, researchers continue to look for clues and evidence for life that didn't originate on our planet. Here are just a few examples that could one day lead us in the right direction.

from the wtf dept

Ah, life imitating art (or art accidentally imitating life). Earlier this year, we had Rob Reid post an excerpt and discuss his new novel, Year Zero, concerning aliens listening to Earth music for free, without a license... and then realizing that they've been infringing our copyrights for years, and owe the record labels more money than exists in the galaxy. Funny story, right?

Except... as Joe Betsill points out, apparently at least EMI really was afraid that aliens might listen to music without a license. In the Wikipedia entry for the Beatles' famous song, "Here Comes the Sun" it notes the following bit of trivia:

Astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan had wanted the song to be included on the Voyager Golden Record, copies of which were attached to both spacecraft of the Voyager program to provide any entity that recovered them a representative sample of human civilization. Although The Beatles favoured the idea, EMI refused to release the rights and when the probes were launched in 1977 the song was not included.

Of course, just a few weeks ago, we also discussed Sagan and the Voyager Golden Record, in noting how the world is changing in that we no longer have to wait for the modern Carl Sagans to decide what gets sent into space any more. So, perhaps the story in Year Zero isn't so far-fetched after all...